24 Forum Responses

Postings I did on the tv.com forums for 24 bugging people to respond to my questions have spurred an interesting debate.

The first response given started with:

I have a few thoughts..
The only thing that 24 and 9/11 have in common, is they both involve terrorism. 24's success has nothing to do with 9/11.

Yet a second response from another person reaffirmed what I thought.

I disagree.

Do you think the general viewing audience would be okay with a hero that is willing to torture anyone and everyone at the drop of a hat - so long as said hero is working in the best interests of this country, mind you - if the year were 1998? Something tells me no.

However, it was interesting to see that perhaps different people are able to disconnect with reality easier and concentrate on the narrative of the show. In some ways, ignore any kind of political overtones in a show like 24 and watch it for the purely entertainment value.
With luck, more to come...

Representation of Arabs Before 9/11

Movies and TV shows that represent 9/11 inevitably need to represent the 'evil doers' (a surprisingly useful Bushism). A show like Battlestar Galactica has the freedom that sci-fi gives to change the terrorist characters to Cylons (effectively robotic humanoids). A show like 24 that is (supposedly) realistic finds itself needing to portray Arab terrorists as Arabs. However, it is questionable whether this is a new phenomenon and Arab terrorists on screen is directly related to 9/11.
There were many movies before 9/11 that featured Arab terrorists, so it can be seen that perhaps that this depiction of Arab terrorists stems from earlier political changes (without going overly political, the numerous airline hijackings during the 1970's is likely the genesis of this). A movie like 'True Lies' predates 9/11 by almost a decade but features Arabic terrorists every bit as sinister as those in 24.

Curiously 24 has persisted in using the old Cold War enemies, the Russians, as the 'bad guys' in multiple series. This perhaps suggests that as a program 24 is quite indiscriminate in its enemies (it is certainly indiscriminate in regards to Arabs, whom they treat as all emanating from one country somewhere in the Mid-East). It may not be that the creators of 24 are directly channeling 9/11 in the show to the extent that is generally assumed.
It is plausible that they just need 'bad guys' and are reflecting society insecurities and fears. It could not really be argued that Russia is truly the bad guy in a political sense anymore and the depictions of Russian government officials attempting to detonate nuclear bombs in the U.S. or assassinate the President are most not a reflection of current political tensions. Yet in American society Russia still has connotations of an 'evil empire' (as Ronald Reagan said), therefore the creators of 24 are able portray Russians in the same way it represents Arabs; for in the American psyche they both exemplify of entities fighting against the American way of life.
Therefore, it is possible that 24 could be said to have at least some elements that are entirely non-post 9/11 elements within it, a rather confusing statement since 24 is truly the ultimate show of post-9/11 ideas.

Director Kevin Smith Talks Galactica

Kevin Smith, director of Clerks, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob (among others) wrote about his love for Battlestar Galactica. He says one of the reasons they got it so right was that it was a reflection of our current culture.

How did the new “B-Star G” peeps spin straw into gold? How did they
make the human beings as interesting (if not more so) than the fucking Cylons?
Like all great art, they simply held a mirror up to our culture. “Galactica” V.2
is an allegory for 9/11 and the War on Terror viewed from both sides. It offers
a far more complex view of two opposite ideologies in juxtaposition to one
another, presenting neither side as particularly evil – just terrifying.
Extremely well done Science Fiction has always been most powerfully effective
when it lays out humanity naked and shows us ourselves, warts and all. Whether
it’s “Planet of the Apes”, “Star Trek”, or almost anything by Phillip K. Dick,
the best sci-fi isn’t simply laser-beam driven shoot-‘em-ups between good guys
and bad guys; it’s the abyss we look into and see someone awfully, sometimes
painfully familiar looking back from.What Sci-Fi does best is allow the author
to comment on what it’s like to be a human being – the shame, the miracle, the
sacrifice, the desire, the grand heights, and the abject lows. And if an author
can accomplish this in stealth mode – be entertaining while not calling
attention to his or her loftier goals – so much the better.

This gives an insight into how representation can be shown on screen. Kevin Smith clearly thinks that the reason it has succeeded is by showing us a part of ourselves that goes unnoticed, or is often ignored to give a vision of perfection. He says sci-fi succeeds (but this can be worked to most dramas) when we watch it and we see something scarily familiar to our real lives being shown to us. Battlestar Galactica especially is full of 'imperfect' people, strangely it is somewhat a rarity on TV (and even more so in TV sci-fi) to have the characters as gritty and realistic with flaws and all.

Confronting Death and Real Violence

Besides a brief period on film in the 1970's Hollywood has never really confronted true violence, and particularly not on television.
Television has almost always followed the path of 'hyper violent PG rated' content. It still gives the exhilarating rush of violence but removes any kind of pain or suffering that real violence, or realistic screen violence would bring with it. It is through this that hundreds and hundreds of Cuban drug barons could be killed in a show like Miami Vice, or faceless officers could be zapped by aliens in Star Trek without the audience having to feel unsettled.
9/11 posed viewers a new set of problems however. People were suddenly aware of pain and anguish, and that removing these images from popular culture could not possibly work in creating saccharine sweet violence this time around. Drama that acknowledges the pain caused by violence are more popular than ever, and people now expect death to be accompanied by suffering. This is seen prominently in 24 Season 6, where Jack Bauer, a man previously seen as being in the vein of John Rambo or John McClane , is now feeling remorse for his actions and now doubts himself, showing the human side of war (this could also reflect the American public's waning appetite for the Iraq war).


(inspired by Larry Gross' 'Letter From Hollywood' in 'Film Comment')

Sex and the City and Love

Sex and the City was obviously always about the quest for love, from its very first episode in 1998. However, when thinking about the final episode (that did have some sort of longing for New York prominently in it, that I suspect may have not be so obvious were it not for the feeling of empathy among New Yorkers for each other after September 11) the idea of complete and utter love was reoccurring. This reminded me of hearing the recordings of the passengers on the United Flight 93 calling their family and friends, knowing that the end was imminent professing how much they loved each other. That idea became somewhat a theme after the event, with love becoming so important with the sudden realisation of mortality.
Perhaps Sex and the City could only ever end in love for all of them, but, the style of the final episodes contain themes so relevant to the mood after 9/11 that it seems the outcome of the series (particularly in the words of Carrie with the 'all consuming love') must have been influenced by the events.

-harry